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Fay: Phillips' emotions in conflict with the facts

By John Fay
3:29 p.m. EDT March 9, 2014

Brandon Phillips won a Gold Glove last season and drove in 103 runs. He takes exception to talk that his skills are ‘declining.’ But his batting average, doubles and stolen bases have all gone down the past three seasons.(Photo: Gary Landers, Cincinnati Enquirer)

GOODYEAR, Ariz. – Brandon Phillips engaged in a little revisionist history in his interview with Anthony Castrovince of MLB.com.

Phillips isn't talking to local writers.

"I don't have nothing to say to those cats," Phillips said to Castrovince about the Cincinnati media. "They know what the deal is. They just talk about how I was falling off and declining. How the (expletive) am I declining? I had 100 ... ribbies (RBI) last year. And I did that with one ... hand. And I won a Gold Glove? So how the (expletive) am I declining? Come on, man."

Phillips isn't talking to me, C. Trent Rosecrans, Mark Sheldon and Hal McCoy because he says we wrote that he struggled in the second half without mentioning he was playing hurt.

Phillips can talk or not talk. That doesn't matter to me. There will be 24 players on the roster who will talk. But the notion that we didn't write about his injury is blatantly false.

It was mentioned over and over again. This is from when I picked him as the club's first-half MVP:

It's hard to pick someone whose OPS is over 200 points lower than a teammate's (Phillips was .734 going into the weekend, Joey Votto's was .937). But Phillips has been so good in the clutch that's he's really stood out. He's hitting .400 with runners in scoring position and .290 with runners in scoring position and two outs. His defense has been the best on the team. Phillips' overall numbers sank after he was hit by that pitch in Pittsburgh, but he's continued to drive in runs.

We checked the archives. Phillips' struggles were never mentioned on Cincinnati.com without a reference to the fact that he was hit on the left wrist on June 1 in Pittsburgh by Tony Watson. I'm sure that's true with the other local media outlets as well.

Phillips was hitting .296 with a .347 on-base percentage and a .481 slugging percentage when he was hit by the pitch. He hit .241/.288/.349 after returning.

It's to Phillips' credit that he played through the pain.

But it's also fair to mention (as long as you put in the caveat that he played hurt) that his offensive numbers have declined. Phillips is an anti-sabermetrics guy, so I won't go all advanced stat to make my point. But his average has gone from .300 to .281 to .261 over the last three years. His doubles have gone from 38 to 30 to 24. He stole five bases in eight attempts last year. In 2012, he stole 15 in 17 tries.

Again, he was very good in the clutch last year. He hit .338. That helped him to a career-high 103 RBI.

Who knows what would have happened if Watson's pitch didn't hit him. But the fact is it led to Phillips' worst year as a Red in nearly every offensive category.

That's fair game – as long as you mention that his numbers fell off after the HBP.

Phillips seems to thrive on anything negative, or that he perceives as negative, that's written or said about him. It seems to motivate him. He's crushed St. Louis pitching since he became Enemy No. 1 in Cardinal territory.

I wouldn't be surprised to see him have a big year this year. Whether he'll want to talk about it or not is hard to say. ■